SSN Media Recap: Silver Stars Defeat Shock

First and foremost SSN would like to congratulate Vickie Johnson who reached the 4,000 pt mark tonight against the Detroit Shock! An incredible milestone for the ironwoman!

Source: sasilverstars.com
Silver Stars Gameday: Silver Stars still the Best in the West!

AUBURN HILLS, Mich.(AP) Becky Hammon scored 23 points and Ruth Riley added 14 to help the San Antonio Silver Stars hand the Detroit Shock their fourth straight loss, winning 76-64 Sunday in the final game before the Olympic break.

The victory also means that San Antonio will retain its lead in the Western Conference during the month-long break, while Detroit fell a half-game behind Connecticut for first in the Eastern Conference.

Detroit was still shorthanded as the result of Tuesday’s fight with Los Angeles, with Plenette Pierson and Sheri Sam suspended and Cheryl Ford out with the knee injury sustained during the brawl. Assistant coach Rick Mahorn was also missing, as he served the second and final game of his suspension.

The game was Riley’s first in Detroit since being traded from the Shock to the Silver Stars before the 2007 season. Riley, the MVP of Detroit’s 2003 championship victory over Los Angeles, missed last year’s game in Detroit with an injury.

Ann Wauters added 14 for San Antonio as the Silver Stars took advantage of Detroit’s lack of an inside presence. READ MORE!

Source: ESPN.com AP
Hammon, Riley lift Silver Stars, send Shock to another loss

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. (AP) — Bill Laimbeer has seen a lot of strange things in his long basketball career, but nothing quite like the last week.

Laimbeer’s Detroit Shock lost four straight games, got national attention for a fight with Los Angeles that cost them two of their best players, signed 50-year-old Nancy Lieberman and dropped out of first place in the Eastern Conference.

“This is as tough a stretch as we’ve ever had,” Laimbeer said after Sunday’s 76-64 loss to San Antonio. “We definitely need to regroup right now.”

Luckily for the Shock, Sunday’s game was the last one before the month-long Olympic break.

“We knew two weeks ago that we really needed the break to get here, and that was before the ceiling caved in,” Laimbeer said. “We didn’t realize it was going to be this bad.”

Both teams entered Sunday’s game in first place in their conferences, but only the Silver Stars stayed there. Detroit fell a half-game behind Connecticut.

“This is big, especially with all of the parity in the West,” San Antonio coach Dan Hughes said. “Every game is going to be big the way our conference is going.”

Becky Hammon, who will be playing for Russia in the Olympics, scored 23 points but the key might have been 14 points each from San Antonio centers Ruth Riley and Ann Wauters. With Plenette Pierson suspended after Tuesday’s fight and Cheryl Ford out due to the knee injury sustained during the brawl, San Antonio had a 24-16 advantage in points in the paint.

“They definitely missed Cheryl and Plenette,” Riley said. “Those are two big presences in their lineup.” READ MORE!

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Game Photos:
Silver Stars Gameday Photo Link
SSN MB Collection!

Persistence, strong faith again drive Hammon as she chases Olympic gold with Russia

Source: MySA.com David King
Persistence, strong faith again drive Hammon as she chases Olympic gold with Russia

Becky Hammon was standing at the luggage carousel at some anonymous airport during her first preseason with the WNBA’s New York Liberty, waiting for her bag to arrive.

At 5-foot-6, she hardly fit in with a basketball team, much less a professional one in the nation’s biggest city, in a league rapidly filling with the best players in the world. She hadn’t gone to a big-name basketball school, hadn’t been recruited out of high school.

As the carousel clanked and whirred, one of the team’s assistant coaches leaned over to her.

“They were saying ‘Oh, somebody will pick you up,’” Hammon recalled. “And I was like, ‘All right, so I guess I’m not making this team.’”

But a dogged persistence, already becoming her dominant personality trait, kicked in.

“My goal in New York was to make it through each day,” she said. “One day, one day, one day.”

Those days turned into eight years.

She went from the last woman on the bench, to a regular, to a starter, to one of the most popular players on the team. Traded to the Silver Stars last year, she led the team to the playoffs and finished second in the WNBA’s MVP voting.

“I don’t really listen to anyone else anymore,” she said of that long-ago day in the airport.

She still isn’t paying attention to negative vibrations as she takes on what she considers the ultimate goal: an Olympic gold medal. In a red-and-white Russian uniform.

Hammon, 31, was snubbed by USA Basketball last year when it picked its tentative roster for the Games in Beijing, so she accepted an offer from the manager of her club team in Moscow to play for him in China.

Dual citizenship in hand, she joins her Russian teammates this month in pursuit of yet another goal in a life filled with unexpected accomplishments, chased and caught thanks to a strong persistence and a stronger faith.

“I grew up with the dream,” of the Olympics, she said. “Because there was no WNBA back then, the Olympics were the ultimate. And I still consider it the ultimate achievement.”

Often ignored

In high school, Hammon was the best player in the state. Unfortunately, the state was lightly populated South Dakota, and a short kid from South Dakota who didn’t look terribly athletic at first glance didn’t get many second glances from college coaches.

“I had recruiters call and say ‘We’re not interested in you anymore; you’re not good enough to play at our school,’” she said. “I had people, when I was in high school, tell me at national camps that I couldn’t play at this school or that school, that I needed to set my bar a little lower.”

So she walked on at Colorado State. In four years, she broke virtually every basketball record at the school, men’s and women’s, and led the Rams to their first NCAA tournament appearance.

And then she had the misfortune to graduate in 1999, the year the ABL — the competitor to the WNBA — folded and had all its players drafted into the WNBA. So she wasn’t picked by any team.

“It was like, here’s the last kid picked on the playground again,” she said.

She tried out in New York and established herself in a league of bigger, stronger, quicker players, propelled by sheer stubbornness and also by a deepening religious faith, one that still guides her life today.

She also started to win over fans.

The Hammonites

Nobody knows exactly when the Hammonites were founded, or how many of them there are now, but the oddly named Becky Hammon fan club has flourished since those days in New York.

The group, which counts members as far away as the Philippines, communicates through the Silver Stars Nation blog, and its dedication to Hammon just continues to grow.

“The woman is the definition of inspiration, and living proof that your dreams can come true,” said Jose Guajardo, a member of the group who lives in San Antonio.

Vickie Graham, an original Silver Stars season-ticket holder, said the point guard has an “everyman” character that makes her popular.

“Fans admire her grit and determination, and feel a kinship of sorts because of it,” she said.

The Hammonites’ dedication has spurred detractors, and debates between Hammonites and Anti-Hammonites can become heated in the growing web of online women’s basketball commentary.

But nothing matches what happened this spring.

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Becky Hammon on ESPN Radio 1250 July 23,2008

Silver Stars All Star Guard Becky Hammon will be on ESPN Radio 1250 The Zone with Chris Duel, Jason Minix and Dawn Murphy Wednesday July 23,2008 during the 5pm hour.  The San Antonio Silver Stars are currently at the top of the western conference and will play the Chicago Sky at 11:30 am July 24th for the annual Kids Camp Day game.